SCRANTON- The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced today that Jorice Williams Dennard, age 25, of Tampa, Florida, was sentenced on July 26, 2022, by United States District Judge Robert D. Mariani to 24 months and 1 day of imprisonment to be followed by a 2-year term of supervised release for the offenses of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft.
According to United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam, Dennard submitted a false application to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry for Pennsylvania Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits using the personal identification information, including name, birth date, and social security number, of another person. Dennard then traveled to Jim Thorpe, PA, in an effort to obtain a package addressed to his identity theft victim that contained a debit card in the victim’s name with a balance of over $14,000 in PUA funds. Dennard was arrested at the Jim Thorpe Post Office.
This case was investigation by the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffery St John.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
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